Check In / Check Out

Co-curated by the Live Art Development Agency for Live Art UK's Annual Networking Meeting, Check In / Check Out was a programme of free Live Art performances at the Great Eastern Hotel, London by Marcia Farquhar, Richard Dedomenici and Stacy Makishi.

Reflecting the ways in which Live Art can offer audiences innovative, intimate and engaging experiences, the three artists each responded to the Great Eastern as a site and took hotel guests and visitors on unusual and unexpected tours of the hotel and its environments. Walk this way….

Marcia Farquhar
The Behind Closed Doors Tour
Assuming the hotel to be the past and present site of anonymous excesses and discreet indiscretions, Marcia Farquhar will lead a tour of the Great Eastern in search of traces of what may or may not have taken place. Drawing on her own experiences as a chamber maid, a decadent guest and a snoop, Farquhar's tour is likely to refer to personal anecdote, history and hearsay, and to be guided as much by contingency as by conscious or unconscious planning.

Richard Dedomenici
Riot in the Hyatt
Inspired by corporate training videos he has found on YouTube, and the 1949 Bollywood classic Andaz, the self styled one-man subversive think-tank, Richard Dedomenici, will take audiences on tours of the Great Eastern whilst simultaneously involving them in the creation of a new Corporate Management Training video (which will in turn be posted on YouTube!).

Stacy Makishi
Room 474
Get on board with Stacy as she considers that the Great Eastern and the Titanic were two of the largest ships ever built and both suffered the same kind of accident soon after they put to sea.  Room 474 is a tour which investigates the underbelly of icebergs, between hotel bed sheets and steamy cold showers. It's about 'going down', coming up for air and holding on too long for love and life.

Bookings
You must book a place for Check In / Check Out in advance by emailing [email protected]. Please put Check In / Check Out in the subject line and include your email and phone contact details. Please note that Check In / Check Out is not suitable for children and that capacities are limited.

Address
Great Eastern Hotel, 40 Liverpool Street, London, EC2M 7QN

Credits
Check In / Check Out has been commissioned by Live Art UK, co-curated by the Live Art Development Agency and Colchester Arts Centre, and supported by the Great Eastern Hotel. Check In / Check Out furthers Great Eastern's commitment to customer experience, by adding value to the GEH memories guests take home. www.london.greateastern.hyatt.com

Live Art UK is the national network of Live Art promoters, working together to support artists and audiences.  Live Art UK explores new models and partnerships for the promotion of Live Art, and develops new ways to increase the national and international visibility of Live Art. www.liveartuk.org

Biographies:
Marcia Farquhar's performances have often been described as 'entertaining' and 'humorous', but she prefers to hear them described as 'intense and precarious'. She does however like the sound of laughter. Her practice encompasses performance, installation, painting, photography and script writing, and much of her work has been concerned with the telling and retelling of stories from both private and public areas of experience. www.marciafarquhar.com

Richard Dedomenici is dedicated to the development and implementation of innovative strategies designed to undermine accepted belief systems and topple existing power structures. His poetic acts of low-grade civil disobedience forcibly ask pertinent questions of society, while his subtle anarcho-surrealist interventions create the kind of uncertainty that leads to possibility. www.dedomenici.co.uk/

Stacy Makishi is a Hawaii-born-London-based artist who works in a variety of media including Live Art, site-specific installation, video, new writing and physical theatre. Her work is often about absence, displacement and memory from the point of view of the foreigner, and explores the tensions that exist in the places in between: between here and elsewhere; between the abject and sublime; between desire and repulsion. Whether she takes on a horror film, fashion show or psychic intervention, her work is often infused with a surreal humor. www.stacymakishi.com